Colorless Thoughts And Blue Velvet
by Polarissruler
Summary: Laughter broke the night. Mikado tried to push himself up and look at the city. How could he not see the results of his game? The night he spent so many sleepless nights to plan, the plan that took him so many guts. It was not fair! What now? Give up and go home, keeping his old life forever and forever. A satisfying ending, would it not be? WARNING FOR A SUICIDE


**AN: Happy (late) New Year, guys! My first fic of the year, huh? I've been working on this piece for so long, wondering whether to turn it into a long fic or to keep it short and quick... In the end, I think a oneshot fits it better. What do you think?**

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Boring, ah, how boring! What would one do once their dreams are over? Mikado had broken through his goal, standing further than he would ever imagine! Ikebukuro was lying in his legs, Rocchi and Aoba forced to fight their useless fight. With the sunrise, the Dollars would melt in the morning mist. They would become a rumor, not different from Celty. They would become an ideal - something eternal and incorruptible; something fit for a dream.

Laughter broke the night. Mikado tried to push himself up and look at the city. How could he not see the results of his game? The night he spent so many sleepless nights to plan, the plan that took him so many guts. It was not fair! What now? Give up and go home, keeping his old life forever and forever. A satisfying ending, would it not be?

"No!" shouted he at the stars and tried to stand up. His whole body hurt; blood dropped off his face and fell in his mouth, making him want to puke. His left eye - black beyond recognizing - barely saw anything. The excitement – the excitement he begged, fought, maimed and killed for – could not keep him up.

He had once last mission left. One last piece of the Dollars remained - their founder. As long as he was alive, the Dollars would be far too real. His hand trembled; the gun could go off any moment and a stray bullet could hit anything. Mikado had to end it! Like he planned!

"Mikado…" said Kida with a weak voice, so hurt that he could not speak. The graze on his cheek - still bright red - burnt him like a wildfire. He tried to crawl towards Mikado, but his leg - shot and bleeding - pinned him to the roof. A dead weight.

Mikado gave him only a second of attention, observing him as a scientist would look at their top project. Kida had lost! The undefeated, incredible, amazing boy, who could never lose, lay in his legs, defeated. How could it be? No matter how much Mikado forced himself, the Kida he remembered - powerful and brave - had nothing in common with the pathetic boy lying on the concrete.

He had just shot his best friend, yet he did not care. What should he feel? Pride? Guilt? Holding his arm with the other hand to stop it from shaking, Mikado took a deep breath, trying to analyze the situation.

"I proved I can shoot you for my plans," Mikado laughed as he looked at Kida. "I can shoot my best friend for such a selfish reason. What stops me from shooting Anri, too? Or anyone else? What does that make me?"

Kida could not answer, overwhelmed by pain. Mikado did not notice - he kept with his monologue as if he had rehearsed it multiple times.

"A monster. Am I not a monster? I could destroy so many lives all in the name of a greater good - yet is it truly good if it destroys so many lives? No, I cannot live anymore! I cannot risk hurting anyone else important!"

His arm fell lifeless; his other hand aimed at his temple. The gun was so close he could smell the gunpowder.

"No!" finally shouted Kida. "Mikado, if you leave me now I'll never…"

Mikado looked at Kida - beaten, crushed, bloody, and yet still caring about Mikado. Mikado smiled - bland, boring warmth that reminded him of a world, where nothing happened. A happy ending he did not deserve. The gun pressed softly against his head. A loud bang echoed through the night and disappeared in the chaos that had drowned the town. A burning pain shot through Mikado for a second and he stopped existing.

Then he existed everywhere at once.

A girl from the Dollars was writing a message on her phone and Mikado peeked over her shoulder to read it. Two friends were fighting and Mikado heard everything they said and every thought they could not. Izaya was sitting in a car, driving away from Ikebukuro and Mikado felt the cold hate that kept him alive.

A drop of his soul had fallen in every Dollar; he could look in every thought, as clear as if it were spoken words. The whole world reached him at once; he was in America and in Japan and in China and in England and…

Mikado would have jumped out of joy - if he still had a body. He could feel nothing - a spirit as omnipresent as the air and just as solid. He could sneak in every mind - but what good was that if he barely existed, doomed to be nobody for the rest of his life… No, he had died! Could his miserable existence be a punishment? He deserved no afterlife, only eternal wandering between life and death, caught in the web of so many humans.

Even crying had become beyond him. Each second felt colder and colder, his soul freezing. The girl had closed her phone and had fallen asleep; Izaya was talking with the other people in the car. Mikado could do nothing. The dreamy lights of the city - and the whole world along with it - got bleaker, until all colors had fused in a bland shade of gray. He could appear everywhere and yet would end more insignificant than a fly.

Was that his lot in death? An endless dream torn between countless secondhand memories? Would he never hear another person's voice?

"Good evening!" someone said. All selves of Mikado heard it at once - like the original one. Somewhere, there was a person that still could see him! Not alone! He scanned through the nights and the days, drawn to the sound like a moth to a wildfire. There! On the roof of a building in Ikebukuro, opposite his death scene, stood a girl in blue, waving her hat to attract his attention.

"Good evening!" repeated she once she felt him around her. Everything about her - from the voice, soft like a velvet, to the skin that gleamed at night made her seem even less real than him. She could melt into the darkness any moment and fuse with the people's thoughts - like how Mikado existed.

"But I must admit, I don't think it has been a good night for you," said she after a slight pause. "Excuse me, if my greeting offended you; I am still not versed in such interactions." She spun, looking everywhere; looking at Mikado. "I do not think it comfortable to not exist in a physical form," said she after a while. "Why have you not formed one?"

Body? Physical body? "How?" asked Mikado - and yet he said nothing. The thought slipped from his mind and reached the blue girl. She giggled in response.

"I cannot tell you; everyone describes it in a different way. For me, it is like another suit - you put on different clothes. My eldest sister says he controls a puppet - another extension of her. My brother treats it as if crafting something; he slowly builds a shell around his soul. How would you do it - only you can tell. Focus and become yourself."

Mikado looked through the people's minds, diving in their thoughts. Each one had a memory of him, each one different. Which one should he use? Endless faces and bodies turned into one another, fighting to be the real one. A shivering heat mirage of heads, hands, and voices. Some of them disappeared like mist blown by the wind; othersr took firm shape. The smiles he showed to Aoba, the voice he spoke with to Izaya, the hair Kida ruffled, the hand that touched Anri's…

Mikado exhaled and opened his eyes. He looked at his skin - gleaming in the moonlight like the girl's. "Is this the real me?" asked he, expecting another answer.

She said nothing but only stared in the distance. A faint blue light glowed in a little back alley; the girl was looking at it with a frown. "That I cannot say," replied she after a while. "Even people themselves cannot know what their real self is; can someone completely unknown answer that question?" She smiled and then, as if to give an example, pointed at herself. "Is this the real me?"

What should Mikado do? He wanted to apologize hastily, to snark at her, to answer the question honestly… All those things he would have done; all those reactions fought in his head. Mikado fell to his knees, holding his head.

"The different memories are fighting." The cheer in the girl's voice had disappeared; it sounded quieter, dying in the chaos of the night. "It always starts with that. Do not worry; once your personality forms, you will become more stable."

"What personality?" asked all voices at once, screeching like an orchestra without a conductor. "I am myself!" They broke down once again, each one fighting to say a different thing.

"Yes, you are," answered the girl, "but you are not the boy you have been. You are a memory - the memories of all people, who remember you. The memories of all people, which cannot believe a person, as great as you, is dead. Everybody has a different idea of you - and those different ideas from your mind in turn." She opened her book, flipping page after a page. "If this is your real self," predicted she Mikado's next question, "I cannot say. I know only that it is the self you have shown to people."

"What am I, then? A ghost? A spirit that cannot pass over until he fulfills a strange condition?"

To Mikado's worried questions, the girl answered with a smile. "A wish. A prayer. Some might even call it a god. Only you can decide of what, however."

"A god?" Mikado repeated her words, his voice shaking. It threatened to disappear into the night once again, leaving only thoughts.

"Some call it that. The power of human faith is limitless, indeed. It is wonderful what they can do if they wish it enough." Another flipped page. The girl looked at the people underneath, as if she was no part of them.

She was not. Neither was he.

The word still seemed strange, too otherworldly. A god? Another legend in the myths of Ikebukuro - physical shape of human wishes. The Leader of the Dollars, forever. Another piece of the tale. Mikado liked that idea.

"What about my friends? Can I go and visit them?" Even before the girl's reply, Mikado found the answer. How could he go and speak to them as if nothing had changed? He did not know which one out of the hundred faces he would show to them, he did not know if he would not just hurt them again. No, impossible. Unless Mikado could be sure of his self, he would not risk going with them.

How much of his humanity had remained? Swirling fog darkened his memories and chilled them. He had forgotten his body; how could he remember his personality? There had to be another way to test how much one changed…

"How does a person become like us?" Mikado decided to change his question.


End file.
